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Label:A conversation piece is an informal group portrait, often depicting friends. This is one of four almost identical canvases painted in 1760–61, one for each of the four sitters. With the ruins of the Colosseum plainly visible in the background, the picture records the young men's trip to Rome. Known as the Grand Tour, such travel was a standard part of the education of eighteenth-century English gentlemen.

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British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

A conversation piece is an informal group portrait in which the sitters are show full length to a scale much smaller than life. A direct outgrowth of Dutch seventeenth-century domestic portraiture, and particularly the interiors of Metsu (1629-1667) and ter Borch (1617-1681), the genre became fashionable in England in the late 1720s and 1730s.1 Dance was in part responsible for its revival in the 1760s, but with the difference that he specialized in showing English gentlemen at ease on the Grand Tour in Rome.2 Although Dance's name was soon to become identified with this kind of souvenir of Italy, the present painting was his first attempt at the genre. A slightly later example with which this picture might be compared shows Charles, Lord Hope, and His Brother James, Later 3rd Earl of Hopetoun, with Their Tutor William Rouett (1762, 38 x 28 1/2", Hopetoun House).3 After his return to England in 1766, Dance never painted another conversation piece.

This picture is one of four almost identical canvases (Nathaniel Dance, A Conversation Piece, 1760, oil on canvas, 38 x 48 1/2” {96.5 x 123.2 cm.} Cullen, Banffshire, the Earl of Seafield Collection and Nathaniel Dance, A Conversation Piece, 1760, oil on canvas, 38 1/4 x 48 1/2” {97.2 x 123.2 cm.}, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art)4 painted in 1760-61 for each of the four sitters. They are, from left to right, James Grant of Grant (1738-1811) dressed in a blue suit with silver trim; John Mytton (d. 1784) in a red coat with gold trim and black trousers; Hon.Thomas Robinson (1738-1786) in mauve with gold trim; and Thomas Wynn (1736-1807) in a green coat with gold trim and red trousers. They are shown in an imaginary landscape, with the ruins of the Colosseum behind them at the left, and at the right a large classical urn decorated with dancing female figures derived from a Hellenistic relief known as the Borghese Dancers (marble, 28 x 74", Paris, Louvre). Just as the four dancers visible to the viewer on this urn are frozen in their sinuous frieze, so the four sitters are artfully arranged into a subtle and rhythmic composition. Only Grant looks out at us; Mytton turns his head toward Grant but gestures with both hands toward the seated Robinson who, in turn, shows Wynn an elevation of the Temple of Jupiter Stator (Plate 51 of Giacomo Leoni’s edition of The Architecture of A.Palladio, vol. 4 {London, 1721}, showing the elevation discussed by the sitters). We are thus invited to enter the picture at the left, but our eyes are drawn by Mytton’s gesture forward again by the diagonal of his left arm to the engraving of the Temple of Jupiter. Wynn closes off the composition at the right.

That the men should be seen to be discussing this particular building is hardly fortuitous, since its columns were in the process of being restored the year the portraits were painted, as mentioned in a letter from Nathaniel's younger brother, the architect George Dance the Younger (1741-1825), who also studied in Rome, to their father on October 4, 1760: "The three famous Columns of the Temple of Jupiter in the Campo Vaccino being in a very ruinous condition, The Campidoglio have employed Workmen to repair & preserve them, to perform which they have raised a Scaffold quite up to the Architrave. I have not let slip this opportunity of measuring them, & have sav’d up money to get them modelled.''5

Thomas Robinson was a keen amateur architect and later a member of the Society of Dilettanti (elected 1763), as were Wynn (elected 1764) and Mytton (elected 1764), but we do not know for certain whether they availed themselves of the opportunity to climb the scaffolding. One resident of Rome who did so was Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), who in that year drew and measured the columns in order to correct inaccuracies in Antoine Desgodetz's Les Edifices antiques de Rome (Paris, 1682, pp. 126-32).6 But in this painting we are a long way from Piranesi's obsessions with the antique. Although two of the poses distantly echo famous classical statues--the Apollo Belvedere pose struck by Mytton and a rather drowsy Farnese Hercules by Wynn--Dance has used antiquity as a prop and a backdrop against which to paste his visiting English noblemen. Far from responding to antiquity either with a sense of passionate moral earnestness, as Reynolds (1723-1792) had done, or awe, as Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) was soon to do, Dance and his patrons here trivialize the classical past. David Goodreau has pointed out that the whole right half of the composition is derived from Francis Hayman's pretty rococo portrait group Margaret Tyers and Her Husband (1750s, oil on canvas, 30 5/8 x 27 5/8” {90.5 x 70.3 cm.} New Haven, Yale Center for British Art),7 which at this date Dance could only have utilized from memory. Still, the picture has great charm and is an important document of the Grand Tour, serving, as it might, to symbolize generations of eighteenth-century English travelers to Rome. Fortunately, a great deal is known about the movements of all four sitters on their tour, the circumstances of their meeting, traveling to Rome, and commissioning their portraits.

Robinson set out for Italy on October 20, 1758, arriving in Turin on November 21. There he settled down for a year's study, of the Italian language under the guidance of a Signor Borra, who ''for near Eight months...never hardly missed spending two or three hours in the afternoon with me."8 In his frequent correspondence with his father, Sir Thomas Robinson, later 1st Lord Grantham, Robinson did not mention his future traveling companions until a letter from Turin dated March 30, 1759: "Mr. Grant is perhaps the only person...I should like to undertake the journey thro’ Italy with. Mr. Mytton & a younger son of Sir John Wynne's are just arrived."9 These three were spending the winter in Geneva, and since Robinson had been to Westminster School with Grant and Mytton,10 it was natural for him to travel to Switzerland in June of 1759 to meet them." As a result of this trip, he modified his traveling plans. This he explained to his father in a letter from Turin of August 18, 1759:

I have now settled something in regard to my progress into Italy & my manner of taking it. Nothing was fixed upon that head in Switzerland, as Mr. Wynne & Mr. Grant were of different Sentiments; the former being desirous of spending his Winter at Venice & the latter preferring Rome. I therefore thought proper on my return to this place to provide against all cases & make sure of an agreeable companion as far as Rome, & finding that my old Acquaintance Mr. Mytton was in the same Case, made Overtures to him & settled that we should go to Rome together at all Events; if our Geneva friends should separate, we agreed to take in the one that was to go our way, and if they intended both to go to Rome we determined to let them go some time before or after us as might be most agreeable to us all, for we propose meeting at last & being pretty much of the same turn in regard to our Love of Virtue, hope our Society at Rome will not be disagreeable. I heard the other day that Mr.Wynne was come over to our Plan. Mr. Mytton was my School-fellow at Westminster & was afterwards at Clare Hall [Cambridge] & at both these places was always one of my intimate Friends. I could not have met with a man more agreeable to my Choice, as he is of a most worthy Character, a good Scholar & has a cultivated understanding.12

Robinson's father replied with his approval of the plan (and of Mytton), and by October 14 the four friends were reunited in Turin.13 By October 30, decisions had been reached. Robinson wrote from Turin: "I shall set out with Mr. Mytton only, as ye other Gentlemen propose going another Road; it would besides be very impossible for so large a party to travel together with Ease or Convenience."14

So these two left Turin and traveled to Rome, stopping at Parma on November 6 and arriving in Rome on November 25. They lost no time in establishing themselves there, hiring a cicerone to show them the city. Wynn and Grant were expected any day. Thus, Robinson wrote to his father in December 1759, "I have ye happiness to be attended by ye best antiquarian in Rome, the Abbate Venuti, who as soon as Mr. Grant & Mr. Wynn arrive will begin to go about with us, which will be in a very few days."15

After leaving Turin around November 1, Grant and Wynn visited Parma, Bologna, and Florence on their way south, but whether they stopped in Rome in December to rejoin their friends as planned or continued directly to Naples we do not know. The next certain sighting of the pair is on January 1, as they entered Naples.16 Grant's slightly dry account of this stay survives; in it he described their ascent of Mount Vesuvius and a collection of Priapuses at Portici. They remained in Naples until February 1760, arriving (or returning) to Rome on the tenth.17 These dates are relevant because the first version of this conversation piece was probably commissioned about this time, with the sittings commencing sometime in the following two months, when the four were together in Rome. This is likely because by April 15, Robinson and Mytton had left for Naples, not to return until June 20, and by the beginning of July, Grant had departed for home.

Nowhere in their letters do Robinson or Grant refer to the conversation piece by Dance, but on the day after his return from Naples, June 21, 1760, Robinson, in a letter to his father, brought up the subject of having his portrait painted. Here he compared the merits of the two leading portrait painters of the city, Batoni (1708-1787) and Mengs ("Mr. Menx") (1728-1779).18 By August of that year he had decided on Mengs (that portrait is today at Newby Hall, North Yorkshire), but added: "It is with pleasure also I can inform you that many students of our own Nation give great hopes of their future skill, & will some day be the means of justifying us against the Reproach of having produced no Great Painters, the true reason of which I find to be, that till twenty years ago we never sent any to study here.''19 And although he did not mention him by name, Dance must have been one of the promising artists referred to, as he was painting Robinson's portrait at just that time. Even before this letter was written, the four friends had begun to disperse. Grant had left Rome by July 12, 1760, when the Scottish Catholic agent in Rome, Abbé Peter Grant (d. 1784), wrote to him in Munich.20 Grant returned with Wynn to England by November of the same year. We do not know when Mytton left Rome, but Robinson had departed by September 1760 for a nine-month return journey that included visits to Florence, Turin, Venice, and Munich. On June 13, 1761, almost four years after he had left London, Robinson was able to write to his father from their house in Whitehall, "I arrived two hours ago."

As we have seen, the commission to paint this work must have been given before July 1760. We can assume that the first version of the picture is that which belonged to James Grant of Grant and is today in the collection of the Earl of Seatfield (Nathaniel Dance, A Conversation Piece, 1760, oil on canvas, 38 x 48 1/2” {96.5 x 123.2 cm.} Cullen, Banffshire, the Earl of Seafield Collection). The artist and dealer in antiquities Thomas Jenkins (1722-1798), writing from Rome to James Grant in England on November 19, 1760, noted that "according to your directions left with me...the Conversation Picture by Mr. Dance I have now by me and I have paid for....All your other things shall be forwarded as soon as possible.”21 This means that by November 1760, a second version was far enough advanced for a third version to be copied from it, as the first version had already left the studio. The next month, on December 17, 1760, Nathaniel Dance wrote to his father:

I have not yet quite freed myself from the disagreeable task of copying the Conversation Picture, tho' I believe it will not now be long before I shall. It has taken me up a good deal of time, as I was obliged to make 4 Copies, & tho I shall not acquire any great improvement from it or be paid much for my trouble yet I cou'd not refuse doing it, as it was the means of making me acquainted with my LORD GREY [George Henry, 5th Earl of Stamford, whose portrait Dance painted, together with that of Sir Henry Mainwaring, 4th Bart., in 1760; 35 x 28", England, private collection] and the other Gentlemen who have given me Commissions for Pictures besides....I am convinc'd these gentlemen will do me all the service that lyes in their power; I hear already that Mr. Robinson has recommended me to the DUKE of MARLBOROUGH, and other gentlemen who are coming to ROME, & he has me very much at heart. My good friend Mr. Crispin introduc'd one to the acquaintance of these Gentlemen.22

But the commission dragged on. Almost a year later, on October 14, 1761, he wrote to his father that he was delayed in finishing his "Aeneas Discovering Venus" because ''I have been interrupted by those four copies of the Conversation Piece."23

Dance's hope that this dull commission would lead to better things was justified, for Robinson recommended him to his cousin William Weddell, whose portrait (with his servant Janson and Rev. William Palgrave) Dance painted on Weddell's Grand Tour in 1765 (38 1/4 x 52 3/4”, Upton House, Bearsted Collection, National Trust); Grant commissioned a history picture (Nisus and Euryalus; location unknown) from him; and Sir Henry Mainwaring commissioned his portrait in addition to the history painting The Meeting of Aeneas and Achates with Venus (c. 1761, location unknown).

With the exception of Mytton, who remains a shadowy figure, it is possible to say something about the characters and personalities of each of the men in Dance's Conversation Piece. The one who comes most vividly to life is Robinson, not only because of his interesting and affectionate letters home, but because his acquaintance Mr. Crispin, writing to a Mr. Porter from Rome on July 3, 1760, described the twenty-two year old in glowing terms:

Mr. Robinson, after making the most of Rome, followed the several Branches of Virtu, but without neglecting the much more essential knowledge that conversation & the best acquaintance here could help him to gather....His person is rather tall, & tho' there may be some perhaps of a genteeler make, will not pass unnoticed, his colour has the freshness of Sir Thomas's [his father], he is short sighted, without any blemish or other defect in his Eyes, his Voice is remarkably good, but to rise now to better things, he has a most uncommon Elocution, a command in speaking that belongs not to his years, while his manner is made to convince not to offend....The learned esteem him a good Scholar, & Cardinal Passionier who shews him uncommon attention & Civility, has confessed himself very much flattered by a Sapphick Ode that Mr. Robinson lately presented him with....He is quick at an Essay of Humour, Capable of any longer work, rises above Mediocrity as a Poet, remarkable for strength of Memory, listened to already at Rome on matters of Taste, understanding well Architecture, drawing himself very neatly, making a daily progress in Musick....The men seek his Company & the Ladies like it, his heart seems to be most happily tempered, there's warmth of feeling in it.24

It is interesting, in the light of this description, to notice how the portrait group is composed around Robinson and how the poses and gestures of the others seem to defer to him. Then, too, his poor eyesight (and possibly, despite Crispin's disclaimer, slightly crossed eyes) may be responsible for his apparently spontaneous glance up toward Wynn. He certainly fulfilled Crispin's expectations for a distinguished life, serving as ambassador to the court of Spain between 1771 and 1779, and secretary of state for foreign affairs in the administration of Lord Shelburne (1737-1805). In 1780 he married Lady Mary Jemima Yorke (1756-1830), whose portrait by Romney (1734-1802) is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Lady Grantham, Philadelphia Museum of Art, M1928-1-36).

The personality of the lanky Scotsman James Grant of Grant emerges in a volume containing his diary and accounts while on the Grand Tour, which is preserved among the Seafield manuscripts in the Scottish Record Office.25 Here he methodically collected his letters of introduction and credit, a list of currency exchanges from scots to sterling, a carefully laid-out itinerary, and an elaborate compilation of the names and birth and death dates of major artists and architects together with their principal achievements. This is followed by a long (and dull) compilation of the principal events in the histories of the towns through which he was to pass and a daily diary in which he jotted down bare facts about the sights and pictures he had seen each day or the inns in which he had dined. Most of this is straightforward reporting: if he liked a picture it was "very fine,” if he enjoyed his stay, the city was "excessively agreeable.'' In short, he was a methodical and conscientious sightseer. Grant returned to England and married Jane Duff at Bath on January 4, 1763. He became Member of Parliament for Elgin and Florres from 1761 to 1776 and succeeded his father as 7th Baronet and chief of the Clan Grant in 1773, residing mainly at Castle Grant until his death in 1811. He had seven sons and seven daughters.26

In some ways the most colorful of the four sitters is the man standing at the right. He has been correctly identified by John Fleming (Robert Adam and His Circle in Edinburgh and Rome. London, 1962, p. 370) as Thomas Wynn, who succeeded as 3rd Baronet in 1773 and was created Baron Newborough in 1776 in recognition of his work as a colonel of the Caernarvon militia and a builder of military defenses in Wales. He served as Member of Parliament for county Caernarvon from 1761-1774, and in 1766, at age thirty, he married as his first wife a daughter of the Earl of Egmont, Lady Catherine Perceval (d. 1782), whose half-brother, the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, was assassinated in the House of Parliament in 1812. Very little is known about Wynn's life and personality during the years he was on the Grand Tour, for no papers from this period survive. It is therefore irresistible, although perhaps unfair, to infer something about his character as a young man from the events of his later life, for he is known to us principally as the first husband of the notorious Maria Stella, Lady Newborough (1773-1843), whose autobiography catalogued, with what degree of accuracy we cannot say, his more flamboyant shortcomings. Chief of these, in the eyes of his wife, was the manner in which he secured her hand--by purchasing her, when he was fifty years old and she but thirteen, from her father, the former jailer of the town of Faenza in Italy, for fifteen thousand francesconi (four thousand pounds).

Maria Stella Chiappini, the teen-age Lady Newborough, was brought to Wales and accepted by English society as the mistress of her husband’s great house Glynllivon; there she lived with Lord Newborough for twenty-one years until his death in 1807. Nevertheless, when she came to write her life story, she described him as a man with offensive breath, discolored teeth, frightful fits of anger, befuddled by "the fumes of wine [which] upset his weak mind." She also described their first meeting when, "at the sight of him I gave a wild cry, and, falling at his knees, with sobs implored him...to think of my youth...[but] He did nothing but laugh at my pitiful simplicity."27

If we know rather too much about Wynn, the opposite is true of Mytton. He married Rebecca Pigot and lived at Halston in Shropshire until 1784 and possessed "a small but excellent collection of pictures."28 This collection was sold to pay for his grandson "Mad Jack" Mytton’s debts by the auctioneer Mr. Gimblett beginning April 13, 1831.29 Earl de Grey, son of another sitter, Thomas Robinson, went to that sale and recorded the following anecdote: "One year when I was upon duty with my regiment at York, a collection of pictures was upon sale which I believe had belonged to a Mr. Mitten [Mytton], the person dressed in red in this picture. The auctioneer sent me a catalogue as my family name was in it, and I went to see it. As far as I could judge without having the two pictures together, it was a precise duplicate of this. It was advertised as a work of Hogarth, and the name of my father and Mr. Mitten were the same as we have always believed them to be, the others were different, though I do not recollect who they were."30

Earl de Grey's description suggests that the Mytton version was inscribed with the names of the sitters and, as one of the four versions (version 3) is so inscribed, we may presume that this was the one that belonged to Mytton.

The Philadelphia version was sold in 1923 with the contents of Brocket Hall, a house that came into the possession of the descendants of Thomas Robinson upon the marriage of the de Grey heiress Anne Robinson, a direct descendant of Thomas Robinson, to the 6th Lord Cowper. It is therefore probable that the Philadelphia picture is the version originally owned by Thomas Robinson. However, a version of the picture believed by the family to descend from Robinson is still in the possession of Lady Lucas, who is also Robinson's direct descendant; but as this is the inscribed version, we can only conclude that the Robinson family acquired Mytton's version and sold Robinson's version.

Richard Dorment, from British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: From the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century (1986), pp. 90-96.

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